


108. magical effect

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [221]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Magical Girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 09:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9603056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: The first time Sarah meets Helena, Sarah still has a soul. Helena doesn’t.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Quick summary of Puella Magi Madoka Magica in an attempt to not alienate either of my readers:
> 
> Magical girls make a contract with this cute lil fuzzy mascot called Kyubey. They can wish for anything, and in exchange they get magical powers and a super-cool transformation sequence & outfit & weapons. Their soul also migrates to a pretty sparkly thing called a Soul Gem. They're Sailor Moon. Their job is to fight witches, who are big scary monsters. Tragic twist of the show: magical girls, once their Soul Gem gets corrupted enough, become witches. It's very tragic. You can now never watch this show, because I spoiled it for you. I hope your Orphan Black fanfiction was worth it.
> 
> (Watch it anyways.)

The first time Sarah meets Helena, Sarah still has a soul. Helena doesn’t. This difference is enough to make Helena stop and take in Sarah: a teenage girl, dressed in leather and a scowl. Helena twists her Soul Gem ring around and around her finger.

“If something tries to make a deal with you,” she says haltingly. Sarah doesn’t know this, but it’s been a long time since Helena tried to talk to another person. Since she tried to explain the problems with magical girls. “Don’t. If someone tries to grant you a wish – don’t let them.”

“Why,” Sarah says, “’cause they’re lying to me?”

“Yes,” Helena says. “And also because I would have to kill you.”

\--

The second time Sarah meets Helena, and the first time Helena meets Sarah, Sarah doesn’t have a soul anymore.

(It happens like this: Cosima’s body broken in the dirt. Alison’s body broken in the dirt. Soul Gems: shattered. A voice whispering through Sarah’s brain, saying: _you could save them. Just make a wish, Sarah. You can wish to bring them back._

She does. Her soul rips itself out of her body and it’s in her hand, now, it’s a gem. She rewinds. She starts it all over.)

This time Helena doesn’t try to talk to her – she transforms in a whirl of olive-green magic and wolfskin and she’s lunging. Cosima and Alison both had weapons when they transformed, magical weapons for magical girls; Helena doesn’t. She just has her hands. And her teeth.

Sarah keeps pausing time and hopping backwards, trying to get away. She’s baffled by it. Helena was – not kind to her, before, but something like kind. And now her eyes are blank and empty and she’s growling about monsters, poor copies of human beings.

“I’m not a monster,” Sarah yells.

“No,” Helena says. “Not yet. I will kill you first.”

\--

The third time Sarah meets Helena—

Or maybe it isn’t the third time. Maybe it’s the fourth. She’s starting to lose track already, and that’s not good. Alison and Cosima broken in the dirt. Alison’s Soul Gem shattering open and letting a witch-monster loose. Cosima leaping at the witch that came from Beth and flying across the room and—

Right. So. The _fourth_ time Sarah meets Helena, after she’s vomited and after she’s rewound back to the start of things—

What was she going to say? What was the point? She doesn’t remember.

She fights Helena. She always fights Helena; it feels inevitable. Maybe she can’t save Helena; Helena certainly can’t save her, because Sarah refuses to die.

_Fine_ , she thinks, and she points her pistol at Helena’s Soul Gem. She pulls the trigger.

\--

The fifth time Sarah meets Helena is right after the fourth time, because the second Helena’s body hits the ground – her Soul Gem shattered, her eyes empty, her outfit vanished back to her regular clothes – Sarah regrets it. She’d thought she was just doing this for Cosima and Alison, just to save Cosima and Alison the way they had saved her from the monster-that-used-to-be-Beth.

(They looked so strong. They looked so brave. For a moment Sarah had wanted to be a magical girl like them more than anything.

Does she regret it? If she answers _no_ , how long until that changes to _not yet_?)

But god, she’s doing it for all of them. The weight of it is heavy on her shoulders. So: she rewinds. She goes back to the train station. She sees Beth, sees Beth’s Soul Gem shatter, see it let loose a torrent of howling and teeth. She meets Alison. She meets Cosima. She sees Helena down the alley, and then Helena lunges.

Sarah pauses time, leaps backwards, unpauses it. “I know,” she says. “I know where witches come from.”

Helena stops. Her eyes are wide. Sarah can see the whites of them all the way around. “They are us,” she says.

“I know.”

“We were supposed to fight monsters, that is why we were made, but then we become monsters.”

“I know.”

“I have to kill you,” Helena says, voice tortured and sad, “before you turn into a monster too.”

“Helena,” Sarah says, and Helena says “How do you know my name.”

\--

The sixth time Sarah meets Helena—

\--

The seventh time Sarah meets Helena—

\--

The eighth—

\--

The fifteenth—

\--

The thirtieth—

\--

Eventually, Sarah stops keeping track. Every day is a list of steps, at this point, all the emotion sucked hollow. A lesson: if you watch someone die enough times, eventually they don’t look real when they’re alive. When Cosima smiles, she is already a ghost. She just doesn’t know it yet.

It’s 3:35pm on the afternoon of the third day, and Sarah is meeting Helena. Helena will leap. Helena will yell exactly the same thing about monsters. If Sarah tries to talk her down it will go like _this_. If Sarah fights her and wins it will go like _that_. Helena is lonely because of _this_. Helena is angry because of _that_. Sarah knows Helena better than Helena does, the way she moves, the ticking of her thoughts inside her brain.

Speaking of ticking: time is frozen, now. Sarah is standing and looking at Helena. Helena’s just started transforming, and her magic around her is a halo of green light. When magical girls are transforming, Sarah has found, they all look like the heroes of their story. Imagine if this was a story with heroes in it.

Helena’s chin is held up, determined. Sarah steps behind her. She unpauses.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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